Unveiling InMobi 3.0

Itfeels like just yesterday that a bunch of us met for coffee and came away witha dream: to build a technology company out of India. A bold dream for thatime.

It’s been 11 years since then andwe have grown, struggled, transformed and continued scaling! Of course, thedecade wasn’t without its challenges, but each one of those challenges helpedus leap closer to what we are today and also kept alive the spirit to dreambold.

We pivoted from mKhoj to InMobi,and we became one of the first global technology companies based out of India.In fact, we were one of the first few tech companies to build a large businessin China.

Our success put us in the limelightway ahead of all our peers. The tech evangelists took notice of us at a timewhen we weren’t even done creating waves. In just a matter of few years, wewere a technology disruptor being covered on MIT Technology Review, the CNBCDisruptor 50 and Fast Company’s Most Innovative companies list.

Obviously, not all the growthhappened just because of us. We were lucky enough to spot capable businesses inother areas, and quick enough to get them within us to form a bigger andstronger team together. Sprout, MMTG Labs, Metaflow Solutions, AerServ andPinsight Media — each of our acquisitions filled a gap that InMobi had at thatpoint of time, and each of these has been a tremendous factor in the heightshat we have achieved.

We have seen major growth inemerging markets like China and Asia with each contributing 25% of our revenueand the remaining coming from the U.S..InMobi is the only company that has attempted to do well in both China and theU.S. We have become cost efficient operationally, resulting in operationalprofitability beginning three years ago.

Disruption can’t happen withoutinnovation. So we continued investing into our core advertising business.Marketers were looking for integrated solutions across advertising andmarketing and pushing back siloed solutions. We understood this very well., sowe started building and integrating our advertising suite to include platformsfor marketers.

Around the same time, we weregetting awed by the power that data was bringing to our existing platforms. Itis well understood now that only those platforms that leverage data will thrivein the future. Fortunately, we had already started building these platforms,software that solve real business problems using data.

Providing this to the externalworld so that every data source and data user got tangible returns from theirdata was an evident next step. In a short while, we were using data foreverything from manufacturing ball bearings to monitoring thermal plants to planning.

But did we hear anyone talkingabout enhancing user experience using data? And then, it hit us., the idea tobuild a data-driven platform to affect something that has always been very dearo us: the consumer experience. One thing followed another and all of asudden,we were building an AI-driven content discovery platform for the endconsumer!

Whatseemed as natural offshoots of our core business turned out to be three newbusinesses with humongous potential. The feeling of thrill was unfathomable.

Fastforward two years. With the new businesses successfully testing the waters, Ibelieve that the time has come to spin these components out as independentcompanies, to ensure they get the focus, investment and autonomy that isnecessary for their growth.

Precisely for this, I am pleased to share the news that InMobi has organized itself into a holding company structure - InMobi Group, a holding company with the following three independent business.

1. InMobi Marketing Cloud
   With a mission to drive real connections betweenbrands and consumers, we envisioned a business that transgressed the boundariesof the ad tech and martech world to deliver a unified solution to the CMO.InMobi Marketing Cloud is a suite of integrated ad tech and martech platforms,supplemented by InMobi’s exclusive mobile intelligence for targeting. With ourincumbent ad business expanding to include marketing platforms, we will trulybe a one-stop solution for the digital CMO’s needs. In fact, we are the onlyplayer providing a mobile-first approach to all marketing needs from marketresearch to customer engagement, a feat unchallenged so far!


2. Glance
   Glance is our first bet on the consumer side. Whatstarted as a mere conversation around “How do we improve the lockscreenexperience for a user?” catapulted into a massive business idea with allleading smartphone brands signing onto the idea within the first two years ofinception! Glance serves as a gateway to the internet for users, helping themdiscover personalized content and services right on their lockscreen. Thanks toour accelerated pace of partnerships, Glance is now live by default on 70% ofall new smartphones in India and is making headway in the Southeast Asia marketas we speak. In less than a year, it has grown rapidly to become the fourthlargest content platform in India with an impressive 36M+ DAUs and 22 minutesof daily usage per user! Call me a maverick, but I believe Glance is going tofundamentally change the way we consume content.


3. TruFactor
   As I write, there is a data explosion that ishappening around us. There are companies sitting on huge amounts of data,figuring out how to store, use and protect the data. And on the other side, wehave companies who want access to data that helps them make better decisionsfor their business. TruFactor serves as the missing link, helping data-richbusinesses manage their data in a secure environment and simultaneouslyproviding the end users with the control, choice and transparency they want.With our technology and team of data scientists, I am convinced that TruFactorwill disrupt the way businesses leverage data.

We have also instituted a highly capable leadership to guide these businesses independently - While the InMobi Group continues to be led by me, InMobi Marketing Cloud and TruFactor will be headed by my co-founders Abhay Singhal and Piyush Shah as their respective CEOs.

So folks, that’s the new InMobi for everyone. Three seemingly different businesses held together by the vision to ‘empower any and every user interacting with our product’, technology and a culture that has become a force to reckon with in itself.

I am optimistic and excited for the future as we take InMobi and its three business into the next phase of growth and coexistence.

Wishing the team great luck for all that is going to come our way.

Naveen Tewari